


Where the Heart Is

by local_doom_void



Series: the Road to Moving On [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blissful Domesticity, M/M, Post-Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Recovery, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trauma, Voldemort Gets the Stone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25869280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: Master is the world. He is the sun, moon, stars, and everything in between and beyond.– – –A peek on the other side of the curtain of Atlanta_Black'sHomeland.
Relationships: Bartemius Crouch Jr./Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Bartemius Crouch Jr./Voldemort
Series: the Road to Moving On [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877191
Comments: 7
Kudos: 117





	Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Homeland](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738402) by [Atlanta_Black](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/pseuds/Atlanta_Black). 



> Have tissue box ready, is soft and I have done my best to make you cry.
> 
> Seriously.

He does not know for certain why he is here.

If you had asked him, he might have said he were still in the basement. It’s just a dream. He has a lot of those, in the liminal space between the death of true sleep and the dreaming, lucid horror that is the Imperius curse. Less dreams and more fantasies – more fantasies and less dreams – he does not know the difference between the two. If there even is a difference. If that difference even matters.

But the thing, he thinks, the _thing_ with dreams – they don’t tend to hurt. In dreams his ragged body, which he is only ever fleetingly aware of anyway, leaves him behind – or maybe he leaves it behind. The duality of his soul and body seems to grow weaker the longer he lives. Well, exists. If this is existing. Is he dead? But if he were dead why does his body ache so very much? Why, if he is dead, does he feel so damnably weak?

In the dreams he does not feel weak. He feels not much at all except contentment. Always he is kneeling in these dreams, dressed well. Not cold. Face buried in the elegant robes resting across a leg, a hem being rubbed between his fingertips. With his face in those robes and his body kneeling, _as he should, as is right_ , he feels nothing but peace. He is here, and safe, and valued, and so long as he does not think too hard on the dream, on the identity of the man who provides this peace, then the curse does not drag him back underwater. So long as he does not think too explicitly of _his master_ –

Barty feels himself twitch feebly as the thought crosses his mind. A great well of grief floods through him, because now he had the thought, and he’s back to drowning – back to nothingness –

Except, he isn’t.

Again the dream doesn’t stop. He doesn’t dare to imagine that it’s not a dream. His body aches, an immediacy that overwhelms him after so long spent floating distant and half-drowned inside himself. It’s hard to move. At the same time, moving is not necessary. This isn’t the basement – isn’t the hard bare mattress. This is soft. There are real blankets. There are pillows beneath his head. He’s so very warm, and comfortable, and…

He doesn’t remember how he got here.

One thing is factual, though – irrefutable. If he accepts that this is real, which he hasn’t, thanks – but if he wants to assume that this dream follows some sort of law of pseudo-reality, which he thinks he must for now, then he must pretend that people are the same. And when he pretends this to himself, and tries to explain why he would be in a comfortable, warm bed…

His _father_ would not do this.

  


Barty is weak, and sleeps. He accepts this as he accepted the impossibility of the comfortable bed. Eventually, he always sleeps. He knows when he wakes up again that he may only get this for a few moments, if he gets it at all, before the basement returns in all its harsh coldness.

Despite his knowing this, he doesn’t fight the urge to sleep. Sleep is its own form of comfort, and long experience has taught him that the harder he cleaves to the good dreams, the faster they go from him.

It is therefore very confusing to him when he wakes up again in the comfortable bed.

When he waits a moment with his eyes closed, dozing and wondering if he is hallucinating, he hears a noise which sounds like a turning page. This noise, which he did not make, means somebody else is here.

Barty, with great effort motivated only by a curiosity he thought long lost, peels his eyes open. At first the sight which greets him is incoherent, until he realises he has neglected to focus his eyes. He used to know this. He works at it until he can see, and then, with the most unusual sense of simultaneous detachment and presence, he looks upon a pale, long-fingered hand, dressed in a black long-sleeved tunic beneath a dark gray day-robe, resting on the open page of a book.

“Barty?”

That voice.

Barty looks with desperation even as he shatters into miniscule and uncountable pieces. It can’t be. Part of him is hiding, telling himself not to care, so it will not hurt later when it is not real. If it isn’t real now then when it isn’t real later he will not despair at any loss, won’t he? Isn’t that so? That is how this works, is it not? If he denies himself the deepest and most luxurious of indulgences, then he may be permitted to partake of the crusts, to sustain himself in the midst of starvation. If only he does not look – !

But it _is_ a man – a man with a face Barty has seen only a scarce few times, only briefly, but of which every detail is nevertheless carved irrevocably into Barty’s mind. The graceful curve of his high, refined cheekbones complementing the aristocratic turn of his nose, thin yet well-formed lips, a chin delicate yet strong, and beneath his smooth dark hair, those eyes – just as red, just as striking, as they always were. _Lord Voldemort_ is here at the dream of his bedside, here, _here_ , looking at _him_ , real or so it seems, his voice as deep and soothing as it always was, even standing now, leaning over his bedside.

That wonderful, perfect apparition blurs, and Barty nearly panics at the thought that the wonderful, perfect dream is leaving him before he realises that his eyes are merely blocked by tears. He tries his best to stop all semblence of emotion, but it rolls from him uncontrollably. His hands, clumsy and awkward though they are, are reaching across the covers without his permission. He shouldn’t be! He’s not allowed to touch – Can’t touch in case he vanishes from this moment. But still his hands move on their own.

“master,” he hears somebody whimper in a pitiful, tear-choked voice. “m-master, _master_ …”

For a moment he wants to scream in rage that somebody else is here, interrupting, before he realises that voice was his own.

His pitifully grasping hands clutch something. It is solid – warm. Despite its warmth, it does not dissolve beneath him. Barty dares not look. He is crying fitfully now, his voice lost once again.

Is this real? he wonders as a warm hand touches his hair. His heart wrenches painfully in his chest as that hand sits there, atop his hair, unmoving. Present. It does not dissolve to smoke – it does not turn angry and wrong as the dream turns on him and punishes him for wishing.

But how could this be real?

  


Master is still here.

Barty cannot question why he’s being allowed to cling to master’s hand with a force so white-knuckled that it must be bruising. He cannot question why master’s hand sits on his head, fingers massaging lightly at his hair and scalp, and never leaves him bereft. Master has no reason to be so kind and patient and tolerant with Barty – master is a man who is results-oriented and who dislikes weakness, despises incompetence. Barty is both of those. Barty failed. Barty is weak and pitiful, his master’s most pathetic servant.

But master is still here.

Master orders him to eat the soup being spooned into his mouth. Barty can’t bear to let such a magnificent man be so reduced – handfeeding a boy who doesn’t deserve anything from him – but neither can he tell master he is not hungry. (That would be a lie.) He cannot say he will not eat, either. (That would be disobedience.) Mind dulled and limbs numb, he eats the soup instead. It’s warm, and much better than anything he’s eaten in – in –

A while. Better than anything he’s eaten in a while.

Master on the bed with him, master holding him up, master’s arm around him. He can’t force his knuckles to stop being white with how he clings to master’s robes. A few times he has to break down sobbing for lack of anything else sensible to do. Master’s name is a prayer when he does. He can’t seem to find any other words to say. (What use would they be anyway? Master is the world. He is the sun, moon, stars, and everything in between and beyond.)

Barty is a good boy, so he eats the soup until master stops giving it.

  


He wakes up and master isn’t there. Because it was a dream. Of course, _of course_ it was a dream, when is anything good real? Everything that seems good is a dream, nonsensical things like master holding him gently and feeding him soup are dreams and lies and _fake_.

The bed still feels real, but he doesn’t even want it. Master is the only good thing. If he can’t have master, he doesn’t want anything – just put him back in the basement already! Stop _taunting_ him – !

“Barty?!”

Barty somehow shakes himself out of the strangled sobbing his lungs are doing, and looks past the tears. It’s dark, no lights, but there’s a figure at his bedside, and his eyes are so very beautifully _red_.

“master,” Barty sobs again, and holds on to the illusion that stubbornly refuses to become smoke. He doesn’t let go, because this isn’t real, but it has more staying power than any other illusion. He doesn’t let go, and he only stops whimpering when it climbs into the bed with him, under the covers with him, and holds him gently.

  


His dream is a whole house.

Barty doesn’t question any of it. If he questions it, it will go away. Master never leaves him – he carries Barty to the kitchen in the mornings for breakfast. Then to the study, or the sitting room, throughout the morning. Back to the kitchen for lunch. The study. The kitchen again for dinner. The bedroom at night.

Barty only pays some attention to the changes in his surroundings. Master is what matters. All his attention is on master.

It is during one of these evenings, though, resting against soft pillows with his head burrowed into master’s chest while he reads, that Barty thinks of something.

He would have never thought that master would allow Barty into his bed. Would get into Barty’s bed with him? But despite how strange it all is, one fact remains – master likely wouldn’t do this.

Barty, though, _wanted_ this.

With that realisation – the idea that he _wanted_ this – comes the truth of things. It’s so pathetic that he can’t help the wheezing cackles breaking from him and breaking the silence he’s existed in for this entire dream.

“Barty?”

A hand on his head. How often had he wished for a hand on his head, fingers in his hair? That warm body so close to his own?

“I’m an idiot,” he mutters, still half wheezing, half crying.

“Why is that?”

For the first time in a while, Barty dares to lift his head and actually focus on master’s figure. He hadn’t done it for a while, scared focus and scrutiny would make the man go away. But no – he’s still here. Barty likely can’t conceive of anything else.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?” he whispers hoarsely. “I was never – I never got out of Azkaban. It wasn’t real. All that torment… just dementors.” He rests his cheek back on master’s chest, tired of holding his head up. “I guess I just found the place in my own head they can’t get to… Or I’m already all the way dead. Is this the afterlife?”

A hand takes his chin. Barty feels himself go limp as he’s forced to look back up, and master looks _fierce_. Lord Voldemort gazes down on Barty with the countenance of an ancient god.

“Regardless of your opinions of the reality or lack thereof of all of this,” he says, “I offer you this – try to enjoy it more. To its fullest. Move around, do something that is not merely laying in bed or napping on couches. Even if it is ultimately false, what is the point of denying it if it feels so real you cannot tell the difference?”

Barty drinks in this miniature sermon. Feels his eyes widen.

He… didn’t think of that.

Even in his dying fantasy, Lord Voldemort is so much wiser than he. All is as it should be.

  


Despite his instructions, it takes Barty another day before he can rouse his spirits enough to try walking. It’s not as much of a disaster as it could be. He wobbles, and feels so painfully weak that a simple walk down the hallway from the study to the kitchen is enough to tire him and make him grateful for the chairs at either end. Master helps him, though – or the dying fantasy of master helps him. Barty doesn’t bother to stop touching him as much as he wants, because this is his last chance for it – his _only_ chance. With his true master in the real world Barty did not dare to impose. It was not his place, no matter how much he longed to worship the man. This, though… this is his own fantasy. Made for him. He is allowed the improprieties, and master only tolerates him with looks which seem to be amusement.

Amusement is fine. Barty can do amusement. He amuses himself, too. Yet another thing he and master share uniquely.

He slowly and laboriously relearns how to dress himself in proper clothing. How to feed himself. How to occupy his time when master is reading. He sits at master’s feet whenever he can once his body is strong enough for the floor, and revels in the quiet of a study filled only by human breathing and the scritch of a quill on parchment.

He loves master so much. He tells him so, because a dying fantasy means he’ll never be able to tell the real master, and this is the next best thing he can have. Tells master how he loves him, has always loved him, will never stop loving him. How he would die for him, do anything for him. Kisses master’s knuckles and lays with his head in master’s lap when master allows it. When his body is even stronger he cooks for master, cleans the house as well. Does the laundry. There is no war here – most likely because he is dying – and that leaves his servitude in the domestic realm.

One day – well, ‘day’, he supposes – it occurs to Barty that he’s doing everything a housewife does, and he laughs. He doesn’t think he’s laughed this loudly and freely in a very long time.

  


His dying fantasy is very detailed. Details he never thought he’d care about are noticeable. The date changes every day. A calendar on the wall crosses itself off assiduously. It’s 1992, which means that if Barty takes it for granted, he is 29.

He was _18_.

That can’t be right. It simply doesn’t make sense.

Except…

There is a mirror in the bathroom as well. Barty doesn’t like looking in it, even though he has to when he shaves. When he looks in it he sees – somebody. There are lines around his eyes that were never there. He looks thin and hollow compared to all his memories. He looked even thinner and hollower when he first woke up here, but even with regular meals and master’s touch, even though his hair is no longer lank and his skin no longer chalk pale, he looks… wrong.

It’s one blemish on the face of this otherwise perfect world, and he wishes it would go. Wishes he could look 18, how he remembers looking. He wants to be young. He wants his freckles to pop vividly from his skin rather than blend in with the bridge of his nose the way they do now. He wants…

He wants his _life_ back.

He hasn’t had a crying fit in a while. Master turns him away from the mirror, soothes him, takes him to bed and tells him that he has a life now – a life with his master, where he can serve him. That he’s safe here.

It’s strange. There is no one grand moment to tell him the truth. Yet all the same, the truth comes to him then, in that bathroom, with the faucet still running and that stupid mirror shattered with the force of his own emotionally overloaded magic.

“Oh,” Barty says, and feels extremely confused and overwhelmed. The tears quite abruptly dry up.

Master looks down at him, head tilted in that way he does when he has a question. “Oh?” he repeats, amusement in his tone.

Barty feels as if somebody has pulled wads of cotton from his ears. Everything feels so much louder, intenser, _closer_. It is as if a bubble that was between him and the rest of the world has popped at last.

“I’m,” he says. Stops in shock at the strange sound of his own voice. “I’m… I am an idiot.”

“You really must stop saying that.”

Barty can’t bother with that for now. He rears back instead, staring around at the strangely sharp vision of the bathroom. “I’m, I’m not… this isn’t a dream. This isn’t… I’m not really dying. I’m.”

A strangeness passes over Lord Voldemort’s face. He leans down then, taking Barty’s head between his hands and forcing him to look directly into those handsome red eyes.

“You are awake now?” he murmurs.

  


It’s not a dream.

It was _never_ a dream.

Barty doesn’t exactly understand how he managed to wake up to a world so perfect. How the world managed to remake itself into something so perfect while he was being tormented. But he is here, now. Master stole a philosopher’s stone and remade himself with it. He is here. He is alive. He – killed father. Stole Barty back. (He _only_ took Barty back – !)

“I’m so so sorry for taking so many liberties!” Barty hysterically apologises, even as he’s curled up in bed with this same man. But there is no anger. Instead, master –

Takes his hand. Smiles crookedly at him.

“I quite liked them, if you must know.”


End file.
